


All the Same in the Dark

by Ivy_in_the_Garden



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Gen, Godchild Secret Santa 2020, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28633341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivy_in_the_Garden/pseuds/Ivy_in_the_Garden
Summary: A missing scene, after "The Little Crooked House".
Kudos: 2





	All the Same in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> My secret santa gift for ilcourtilcourtlefuret!

They’ve left her here, here in her room where the fire sits back behind the wrought iron screen, tame as a dog. With her arms folded around her knees, she watches the flames, dressed now in a fresh chemise. A red ribbon strings together the tiny pintucks and _broderie anglaise_ trim, much more delicate fare than the unbleached cotton shifts she grew up with. But perhaps that was part of it all too—finery to make up for time, as if she simply wore it enough, they could pretend this had always been her lot.

But that would never be true.

If she tries hard enough, she can hear her beloved Big Brother heatedly discussing Rebecca, Bertha, and the whole burned down lot. Maybe yesterday, she might have tiptoed across the room and eavesdropped, but that was yesterday, and as the saying went, she was a different person then. 

Instead, she waits until the last of the brandy is drunk and slurred _good nights_ trail behind, only blinking stars in the night, before looking away from the fire.

She is weary, she is a hollow-eyed, drained thing, half-entranced, half-afraid of this orange light of the fire, invited into her life, unwillingly. It falls down, resplendent along the art nouveau tiles, inlaid braids of lilies and angel’s trumpets.

She is well-kept, that much is undeniable.

She doesn’t know whose room this might have been, before she came to be, and she’s not sure she wants to know.

Sparks settle against the fire screen, contentedly burning out in front of her, and all she can remember is the strange smell of flesh burning, and how she can still smell it now—its afterthought, its ghost—on her fresh clothes.

The pail is heavy in her hands, but she throws the water onto the fire anyway. Steam—angry, thick steam—surrounds her. The orange light flares and fades. She’ll be scolded tomorrow, asked _why can’t you just be good?_ as if she does not ask herself this question again and again.

But she watches the fire flicker and die down into grey lumps.

This is good, this is good, this is different now.

She draws an uneasy breath. Gingerly, she lights one of the gas lamps near her bed, finding it easily in the sudden dark. She’s used to it, after all. 

A trilling, soft and low at her door.

Something out of place.

She tiptoes across the room, heart loud as she peeks through the keyhole, one hand on the escutcheon, the other holding the lamp.

Spilling out in the dark, past her door is the dense spiderwebs of doilies, hard lines of the rosewood tables, deceptively solid dried flowers, paintings of unfathomable faces—curiosities in the day, judgments at night. It’s not as if she doesn’t know about the incalculable victims of the Hargreaves and the other dead things that walked the walls at night. Would Rebecca among them now, too? Her governess?

Was she responsible for their deaths too?

_I am a daughter of the Hargreaves_ , she says to herself. And in that moment, it is half-prayer, half-incantation. She waits there, willing herself not to shake.

The trilling beckons.

And she follows, because that’s all that’s left to do. The corridors wind and sigh, dreaming expanses of wooden walls, decorative furniture, printed silk wallpaper. The lamp throws its thin, dirty light around her like a halo, like a blanket, like a net. But she follows all the same.

She moves in the dark, half daring the hands of the dead to seize her. _I am a daughter of the Hargreaves_ , she whispers.

A ghostly flash near the stairs.

“Wait,” she whispers, afraid to wake anyone. If anyone should deal with this, it was her.

And at the top of the crooked stairs, bowed under weight of centuries of plots and poisons and misdeeds and cruelty and horrible secrets and strange kindnesses, seated against the descending moonlight on a windowsill is a small canary.

Grey and yellow, unnaturally still.

It watches her, and she watches it back, expecting it to fly away, wondering just how it has found itself inside this mausoleum of a home.

It ruffles its feathers in return, in its own answer.

“Don’t you want to get out?” she asks quietly, checking to see that no one has found her. “Here.” With some difficulty, she turns the rusted window latch, her shaking fingers slipping on the metal once or twice, and pushes the window open. 

The cold air falls past her, like a shawl.

“Come on,” she tells the little creature. “We’ll both be in trouble if anyone finds us.” _And they might put you back in a cage too._

With a trill, it regards her with a dark, unfathomable eye. It hops along the window’s edge. And then, it, too, is gone from the house, from her little porcelain world.

And she is unspeakably sad to see it depart, in a vanishing trail of yellow and grey, into the never-ending dark.


End file.
